Ha!Ha! jiffer, I am in SoCal too! Once we are both past this, we should go do a century ride to celebrate.

One thing i forgot to mention is that as I am doing these slow efforts my cadence needs to be above 95. At first I thought this is stupid, I'll never get any better doing this but I noticed that within a week my conditioning had improved. If my avg hr was 125 riding trainer at 13mph at 95 cadence, then the following week my hr was lower and the same speed felt easier than the week before, so there is a method to his madness. As my nutrionist said, I need to ride zone .5 (even less than a zone 1). 135 hr is the max I can go to, so when I do my trainer rides, I try to stay way under this to prevent stress to my body as I rebuild my base.

On my long rides, I choose flat routes as much as possible. I do come across some hills that are between 2-4% grade. I just make sure to go very slowly and spin. This is tough for me b/c I am a climber but I am sticking to what my nutritionist says. I've tried to ride hard a couple of times and i really screwed myself the next couple of days in terms of stress and insomnia. Since I've been dealing with this since last September, I don't want to go backwards anymore. From now on, it's long and slow for me (at 95 cadence and above).

What supplements are you on? My problem was cortisol. I could not fall asleep or stay asleep. Then one stupid doctor put me on mega doses of progesterone and melatonin to help me sleep. Wrong! Both these convert to cortisol. So at 10pm, I'm wide awake ready to run a marathon. I had to take sleep aids to get to sleep but would still wake up at 2 and 4 am unable to get back to sleep. My nutritionist took me off of those hormones. Now at bedtime I take some cal/mag/zinc along with 5 htp. That helps.

Your blood sugar spikes a lot. How many times a day do you eat. My food plan requires me to eat 7 x a day. I eat every two hours. Aside from my main meals, my snacks consist of a fat and sugar (fruit with tablespoon of almond butter). Before I go to bed, I eat a combo of shredded wheat, applesauce and almond butter to prevent my blood sugar from rising during the night and preventing my cortisol from going up to compensate. I had a friend go through adrenal fatigue where he was tired all the time due to low cortisol and he used a lot of salt on his food plus ate lots of protein.

Also when I do my long rides, I make sure to try to get in 400 calories for each hour of riding to prevent cortisol from rushing in to the job b/c I am running out of energy. So I have been relying on those Justin almond butter packets (the flavored ones like honey almond or chocolate b/c it is all about pairing fat and sugar when you work out.)

The next thing they are going to put me on is testosterone. My hormone range is normal but testosterone was slighly below normal. He feels it is too low for an athlete. The theory now is that I don't have enough T, so adrenaline and cortisol jump up to compensate. Will let you know how it goes. What are your hormone levels like? I am 45 yo. Since this started, I haven't had a period. I hope I didn't put myself into menopause.

Well I'm off to eat some breakfast and then spin for an hour. Woo-hoo!

Let me know if any of this makes sense.